New user - I want to better understand the program

Help Desktop App
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Hi, all!
I am a new user and a new person into this encryption thing so I hope you would be gentle with me :slight_smile:

So, I just signed up to sync.com and had my Cryptomator set-up just to test the waters. I have a few clarifications (and if it has been answer via another thread, please feel free to send me that way so I can read more about it).

  1. Do my files still need to be available locally if I have already placed it in my Vault which is connected to my cloud service? (my thing here is, I want to free up space on my laptop but I want files to either be searchable via Finder or easily accessible when I open my vault)
  2. How would I know if the file in my vault has been successfully uploaded into my cloud service? Since I can only view the encrypted files when I check my cloud account via a browser.
  3. I have been seeing that Mountain Duck might be a good companion to Cryptomator. How so? I’ve been trying to read up on them but I’m still a bit confused on how they come together.

Would love to hear your thoughts on my questions and I look forward to your answers. Thank you! :slight_smile:

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Hey and welcome to the Cryptomator Community :slightly_smiling_face:,

Just deleted your second topic (since identical) and moved this one to the right place you wanted it…just so you don’t wonder.

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Thank you so much! No worries about it. Appreciate the advise :slight_smile:

Excited to hear from fellow users in the community. Thanks! :smiley:

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Cryptomator desktop does only encrypt. The sync is done by either your storage provider app or a choosen third party app. Hence, it depends on these apps. If they offer a file on demand function, you can free the space needed. Please note that there are reports that the file on demand function causes problems when the file is not recognised as local available.

Because the sync is the job of the used sync app, it’s up to it to inform you when the sync is done successfully or if there are sync problems. You can not obviously check if a specific file in your vault was uploaded by checking the online files. That would make the encryption useless. If you know that the timestamp of a file in the vault is unique, then you can search for the same timestamp online, as timestamps of the encrypted files are equal to the unencrypted ones.

With Mountain duck you can mount your online storage drive directly as a volume into finder. As mountain duck can also read and write Cryptomator encryption, you can therefore create, open, read and write into a online stored Cryptomator vault directly without a local sync or having Cryptomator installed local.

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Thank you @Michael

Very big help! I think I’m starting to understand this now better. Cheers! :slight_smile: